Posted on 07/30/2012 11:44:31 AM PDT by Robert DeLong
Murder is the opposite of art: destructive, impoverishing, nihilistic. To discuss the act of a killer as if it had some relevance to a work of culture is to usher the age-old enemy of mankind into one of his citadels. So I will pass over the massacre in an Aurora, Colo., theater in a silence respectful toward its victims.
But the film that was playing in that theater—"The Dark Knight Rises"—deserves to be loudly celebrated as a masterful and stunningly honest work of Western popular culture.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Good article, great movie! The more I think about it - and you do think about it after you’ve seen it - the more I realize that it really deserves the word “great.”.
Incredibly literary, too...lots of references to Dickens and to western cultural figures. But you don’t have to know any of them to have the movie make sense and have an impact, because it’s really a work of its own.
It totally destroyed OWS. I’m surprised we don’t have leftists storming the theater.
Klavan is probably the first one to write about it. Certainly nobody in the MSM would be able to suss out the pro-Free Market themes. I respect the way Klavan has taken career risks to say unpopular things. Klavan is able to say these unpopular things in a manner that makes the conventional wisdom seem lame and Klavan's POV becomes appealing. Selling books relies heavily on getting strong reviews. Less so with current technology but Klavan has surely paid a price for standing up for his belief in Personal Responsibility and Individual Freedom.
Wow just Wow! Every now and then Truth just jumps out and smacks the public in the face. Great article.
But the heart of the film is not money. It's people and what they choose to make of the injustices of their lives. Catwoman is the linchpin of that theme. She is the link between those like the heroic capitalist Wayne, who allow hardship to temper their souls, and those like Bane, who cling to their hurts and demand to be repaid in societal destruction. Catwoman begins as a thief making revolutionary proclamations: "There's a storm coming." She ends up confronting the true nature of that storm and a choice between that and freedom's better way.Just saw it today.
It absolutely blew me away. Great performances all around.
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